I love you, best buddy! No one makes me puke like you do.

Found this fun toy at Bettie Bookish

Double Standard When It Comes To Underage Sex?: ABC News blurb, apparently comes with a story by John Stossel on 20/20, which I won’t get to see until well after it airs at home.

Interesting reading, though.

Reminds me of the time I was visiting my in-laws and they were telling me all the tales of Young Lazy Bones. They showed me the “gift” they gave him for his 16th birthday- a “rubber plant”, some silly little plastic plant that they’d stuck a bunch of condoms to.

At that time, his sister was around 16.

She did not get a rubber plant. She was not allowed to have her boyfriend in her room with the door shut. The in-laws always knew what she was up to and where she was.

So I quizzed my dearest love about his teenage years some more (because I knew from other things he’d told me that he was *ahem* a bit of a rule-breaker). He was doing “it” not long after his parents gave him that funny little plant. He was doing it in his room while my mother-in-law was at home, no less.

And the idea that his sister might be gettin’ it on with her committed, decent, hard-working boyfriend? Oh he HATED that. Guy was “too old for her”, too (two years older, for the record) and he regarded the whole situation with much furrowing of his monstrous eyebrows.

Now as I began to get to know my young sister-in-law (who is, incidentally, the same age as my oldest niece) I learned that she is a studious, hard-working girl who reminds me a lot of my own little sister (who is, incidentally, the same age as Mr. McSnide), but much more agreeable. Her boyfriend, who is now her fiance, was a good kid who worked (at the time) as a gravedigger. I like these kids! They are good kids, not jackass teens (even if young sis-in-law had her teenage girl moments of snottiness) and they seem to be genuinely in love with one another.

And apparently they aren’t doing the horizontal tango, but are waiting until they get married (in Fall of 2009).

Well. So they say. If they are or they aren’t is no concern of mine.

Even though this girl is 18 now and a full-time college student, if my in-laws thought she was doing the deed, their heads would probably explode.

My mother-in-law, within 10 minutes of meeting me for the first time, was traipsing around my house with a video camera, and popped her head into my bedroom and filmed the bed with the comment:

“And here’s Adam and Sally Anne’s bed, where they do the no-no”

(Oh yeah, that is his name, in case you didn’t know)

Of course, I was mortified for some reason, and laughed. It was weird.

But it illustrates the point I wanted to make with all of this rambling and parenthetical craziness, that I absolutely believe that there is a double-standard.

I plan to lock all my babies away in various attics/basements/closets during their teen years, regardless of gender. Everyone can be just like mommy, and wait until they are legal adults.

(I was 19 years old, if you’re nosy like that. And that means that I only just barely beat Lazybones onto the market. Not that I would have done it with him if we’d known each other at the time. He was WAY too young for me.)

Found this item of interest today- Military divorce rate holding steady. I was surprised by that- and evidently some other folks were too.

Mentioned in the article is that the statistics are not taking into account breakups that occur after the servicemember has departed the military. I’m betting that the Army policy of 15-month deployments with not even a year in between them is shattering far more marriages than are accounted for. I say “not even a year”, because that’s the reality of it- they might be getting a bit more than the 9 months we got between my old unit’s first two tours in Iraq, but I’d be surprised if it was even close to the “Fifteen there, fifteen home” that they supposedly aim for.

The support for the spouse left behind is, in my experience, crap. I base that on the year that my Lazybones was gone (the contact for his platoon moved out of state and forgot about telling the other spouses, bright girl) and from the accounts I heard from fellow soldiers following the first tour, whose wives were positively disgusted with how the Family Readiness Group was run. Currently, I’m noting that the group here is great at forwarding me a lot of crap- mostly attachments that I don’t even look at- and kindly plasters all the email addresses on the list into the “To” field- why they can’t figure out what “Bcc” is is beyond me. The same goes for certain members of my family, but that is a whole other post.

ANYWAY.

The deployment schedule is horrible, and it’s kicking the crap out of the families of people who do one of the toughest jobs there is for crappy pay and dubious “benefits”.

I wonder if they have any statistics on how many of the divorces took place between two military members (current or former service). On the one hand, it’s a hell of a lot easier to cope with it when you know what it’s like. On the other hand, knowing the ridiculous amounts of cheating that went on during deployment, it can be even more stressful. Not for me in particular (L’bones knows my opinions of what should happen to those who cheat, and he values having his testicles attached to his body), but really it was so outrageous, one can’t help but be a little disturbed. That is also a whole other post though.